1. Field of Invention
The inventions disclosed herein relate to the field of wireless communication. More specifically, but not by way of limitation, it relates to room-specific pairing of electronic devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless technology is widely used to facilitate communication of video, voice, and data packages between different electronic devices. The ability to “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) is a desirable feature of wireless communication systems. With BYOD different participants can connect their own devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones to a base station through a wireless network interface such as 802.11 technology. The base station can, for example, facilitate a video/audio conferencing session between the participants. In order to establish such communication, the BYOD must located the network address of the base station, which presents various problems.
Referring to FIG. 1, multiple base stations 110 (referred to base stations 1101 through 1103 individually) are positioned in different physical locations, Site A through Site C. The base stations 110 are capable of establishing a wireless communication between the base stations 110 and electronic devices 120 (referred to electronic devices 1201 through 1208 individually).
Conventionally, the Bluetooth® technology is used to establish the wireless communication between the electronic devices 120 and the based stations 110. Bluetooth pairing is ubiquitous, cheap, and reliable at 30 foot or lesser distances. The bit-rate is more than adequate to send information containing the network address of the base station between the electronic devices 120 and the base stations 110 in a few seconds. However, the Bluetooth radio frequency signal goes through walls quite easily. In case the base stations 110 are in the vicinity of each other, the electronic devices 120 may not know which of the Bluetooth base stations 110 is located in the same room in order to connect to.
For example, the electronic device 1201 may be participating in a meeting in Site A. Therefore, the electronic device 1201 may wish to connect to the base station 1101 to share presentation of video/audio with other electronic devices 1202 and 1203 in the same room and/or other electronic devices that are remotely connected to the base station 1101. However, using Bluetooth technology for pairing, the electronic device 1201 may not be able to determine that the base station 1101 is located in Site A and therefore may mistakenly connect to the base station 1102 or 1103 in Site B or Site C.
Alternatively, an ultrasonic beacon may be used to establish the wireless communication between the base stations 110 and the electronic devices 120 as described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,896,651, which is hereby incorporated by reference. The method is referred to as room-specific pairing because the ultrasonic beacon can only be received within the enclosed room. The ultrasonic signal does not go through the walls. However, the disadvantage of this approach is its very low rate of data transfer. For example, it typically takes several seconds to send a 32 bit IP address reliably. If much more data is required, for example, a 64 bit IP address, the length of time for the data transfer would be unacceptably long. In addition, the ultrasonic communication of the data transfer is only one-way.